Handheld mobile devices, such as cellular telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), are becoming increasingly powerful both in terms of processing power and the ability to provide access to data. The usefulness of these enhancements is often limited, however, by an inability of mobile devices to display data effectively due to the small size of the display, to the limited bandwidth available for wirelessly delivering data, and to mobile device's limited memory resources relative to laptop and desktop computers.
There are beginning to be some applications that are specifically designed for handheld mobile devices. Many such applications are based on application development platforms also specifically designed for mobile devices, such as Java 2 Platform Micro Edition (J2ME) and Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW). Some applications that are designed for retrieving data from a remote location to a handheld mobile device are browsers that correspond to conventional browser applications in that they enable users to enter uniform resource locators (URLs) to retrieve information from any internet web site. Other applications enable data to be retrieved by launching a separate browser application in response, for example, to selecting a hyperlink in a user interface. In addition, specialized, limited functionality applications are available that provide a mechanism to access data from dedicated application service providers.
One useful application for mobile devices is that of “local search.” Such an application allows a user to specify a particular geographic location or area when submitting a search so that the search results relate to that location or area. For example, a user may enter “dim sum restaurants 56523” to be provided a list of all dim sum restaurants in the 56523 zip code. Or the user might submit “hotels near LAX” to receive a list or map showing all hotels near Los Angeles International airport. Such local search can be particularly helpful to users of mobile devices because they are often looking for information about things around them, e.g., attempting to find directions, from their car, to a particular store or building. Thus, there is a need for computer programs or interfaces that provide users with convenient access to information and useful presentation of that information.